The Broadway

Company type	Department store
Industry	Retail
Founded	February 24, 1896; 128 years ago (1896-02-24)
Founder	Arthur Letts Sr.
Defunct	1996; 28 years ago (1996)
Fate	Converted to Macy's
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.

The Broadway was a mid-level department store chain headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1896 by English-born Arthur Letts Sr., and named after what was once the city's main shopping street,^[1] the Broadway became a dominant retailer in Southern California and the Southwest. Its fortunes eventually declined, and Federated Department Stores (now Macy's, Inc.) bought the chain in 1995. In 1996, Broadway stores were either closed or converted into Macy's and Bloomingdales.

History

Origins

In 1895, J. A. Williams formed J. A. Williams & Co., built and opened his Broadway Department Store on August 29, 1895. In February, 1896 the store was liquidated, and Arthur Letts bought the name, assets, fixtures, and the building lease for $8377 and, on February 24, 1896, the Broadway started operating under Letts.^[1][2][3] The previous owners had a good location in a recently constructed building at the southwest corner of Broadway and Fourth Streets,^[4] but had all of its assets seized by their creditors for failure to pay its bills after just four short months of operations.^[5][6][7] In contrast, Letts was able to pay off all of his creditors in a short period of time after acquiring the assets for the failed store by the quick sale of the same assets and by watching his expenses.^[8][9]

In a short period of time, the business was doing so well, that it had to expand into adjacent store fronts.

The New and Greater Broadway (1914–15)

Between 1900 and 1910, the population of Los Angeles more than tripled. Bullock's, in 1907, and Hamburger's (later May Co.), in 1908, had both opened stores occupying entire city blocks. It was clear to Letts that The Broadway needed a new, much larger building.^[2]

In 1912 The Broadway announced plans for a new nine-story building with nearly 11 acres of floor space to be built in several phases at the same location (320 W. Fourth St., southwest corner of Broadway, now the Junipero Serra state office building). The store would have 11 passenger and 4 freight elevators; three entrances on Broadway, one on Fourth St. and one on Hill St. The architect was John Joseph (J. J.) Frauenfelder of Parkinson & Bergstrom.^[10][11] with construction starting in 1913 while the current store remained in business.^[9]

The first phase was to acquire space in the first three floors of the Clark Hotel Building along Hill St.; the hotel backed up to the Broadway's existing store. This 71,000-square-foot (6,600 m²) Hill Street "division" (wing), as it was then called, opened as a new part of the store. The departments from the southern half of the existing store along Broadway were transferred to the Hill St. space on November 3, 1913.^[12][13]

The second phase was to demolish the southern building of the existing store complex, along Broadway, and build the southern half of the new Broadway store in its place. This section (96,600 square feet (8,970 m²)) opened on August 10, 1914. Departments from the northern half of the store facing Broadway and Fourth streets were transferred into the new space.^[14][15]

Finally, the northern half of the store along Broadway was removed and the northern half of the new Broadway store was built. This section opened on June 25, 1915,^[16][17] although the formal inauguration was during Fashion Week on September 16, 1915.^[18]

The new "New and Greater Broadway store", as it was advertised,^[19] had 242 feet (74 m) of storefront along Broadway and 166 feet (51 m) along Fourth Street. It was 9 stories high and covered 11 acres (4.5 ha), stretching from Broadway all the way west to Hill Street, which also had an entrance.^{[citation needed]}

On November 10, 1924, The Broadway added another building, 80 feet (24 m) wide and 123 feet (37 m) deep, immediately west of the main building along Fourth Street, thus adding 119,790 square feet (11,129 m²) of floor space over ten above-ground and three below-ground floors. It added six passenger and three freight elevators.^[20][21]

In summary, the Downtown flagship store evolved in size as follows:^[21]

Suburban expansion

In 1931, The Broadway bought the B. H. Dyas Hollywood store which became the Broadway-Hollywood.^[22]

In 1940, The Broadway built a landmark three-story store in Pasadena, at the corner of Colorado and Los Robles on the site of the old famous Maryland Hotel. The striking Streamline Moderne building had a 117-foot tower with a marquee facing both streets, and parking for 400 cars.^[23] It would be abandoned in 1980 for a newly built store across the street in the new Plaza Pasadena mall.

In 1950, the company merged with Sacramento-based Hale Brothers to form Broadway-Hale Stores. In the same year it purchased the year-old Westchester branch of Milliron's and converted it to a Broadway. The store, designed by legendary retail architect Victor Gruen, was a considered a model of ultra-modern retail architecture at the time, with rooftop parking and striking, angular design designed to attract passing motorists.^[24][25]

The Broadway bought out competitors in Los Angeles (B.H. Dyas, Milliron's, and Coulter's), and expanded into new markets through acquisitions of small local chains: Marston's in San Diego and Korricks in Phoenix. In later years the Broadway opened stores in Nevada (Las Vegas), New Mexico, and Colorado. In 1979, it was split into two divisions: The Broadway Southern California, based in Los Angeles; and Broadway Southwest, headquartered in Phoenix, for the stores outside California.

Dissolution

The Broadway's parent Carter Hawley Hale Stores ran into financial difficulties which resulted from poor management decisions and hostile takeover attempts. In 1996 the chain was acquired by Federated Department Stores and the majority of locations were converted to the Macy's nameplate. Several stores in affluent areas where Macy's already had locations, South Coast Plaza,^{[citation needed]} Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, Century City Shopping Center, Beverly Center, and Fashion Island Newport Beach,^[26] were closed, refurbished and reopened as Bloomingdale's. Federated sold many of the remaining stores to Sears.

Downtown flagship store

The nine stories Beaux Arts building with its restrained Italian Renaissance Revival ornamentation at the southwest corner of Broadway and Fourth was designed by architects John Parkinson and Edwin Bergstrom to serve as the headquarters and the flagship store for Arthur Letts' Broadway Department store chain with the first phase of construction completed in 1913. Construction, which included demolition of the previous store and expansion to the rest of the block when additional property were acquired, continued on several different stages until 1924. The Broadway occupied this location from 1913 to 1973.

On Friday, November 16th, 1973, at 6:00 P.M.,^[27] The Broadway's downtown flagship store at 4th and Broadway, where it had operated for 77 years, closed its doors forever. It was replaced by a new, smaller 3-story flagship store at the newly constructed Broadway Plaza office and retail complex nearby.

The original flagship store structure changed hands a number of times and sat empty for years, before being bought by developer Roger Luby in May 1984. Luby's plans fell apart the following year when his partners, a consortium of 32 Oklahoma savings and loans defaulted as a result of the savings and loan crisis and the $56 million (~$132 million in 2023) renovation project defaulted on its loans when half completed in September 1986.^[28][29]

As state office building

In June 1995, the State of California paid $1.8 million for the building to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which inherited the property upon the collapse of some of the savings and loans, and $61.5 million for renovation^[30][31] to replace the unsafe Junipero Serra State Office Building at Broadway and First streets,^[32] which was later demolished in 2006.^[33] The renovated building at Broadway and Fourth reopened as the new Junipero Serra State Office Building in 1999.^[11] To balance the state budget, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sell the office building to private developers as a part of a sale and lease back scheme.^[34]

As of 2020,^[update] the Junipero Serra Building is one of 56 buildings managed by California Department of General Services and only one of two (the other is the Ronald Reagan State Building) that are located in Los Angeles.^[35]

Store list

This is a list of the Broadway store numbers with their locations and opening dates:^[36][37][38]

The last Broadway Southwest store was originally planned to be built at Superstition Springs Center mall in Mesa, Arizona. But due to the attempted hostile takeover by The Limited, construction was halted. And as a result, it started doing business as Robinsons-May instead in 1994 (now Macy's since 2006).

Gallery

• 
  The first location, opened in 1896, 4th and Broadway
• 
  The Broadway Wilshire on Miracle Mile in 1973. The branch was originally a Coulter's department store.
• 
  A former Broadway branch at Hawthorne Plaza
• 
  Broadway advertisement in December 1909